It’s still hard to believe that federal prosecutors this month tried to secure serious felony charges against several members of Congress who’d done nothing wrong. Now, however, those efforts appear to have run their course. NBC News reported:

Jeanine Pirro’s office has decided to stop pursuing the case against six Democratic lawmakers who urged members of the military and intelligence communities in a social media video not to comply with unlawful orders, three people familiar with the matter told NBC News.

To recap briefly, several Democratic military and intelligence veterans appeared in a video, released in November, in which they urged service members to reject illegal orders. This sparked apoplexy within the Trump administration, as if it were somehow outrageous to remind service members to follow the law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Donald Trump helped lead the charge, insisting that the Democratic lawmakers, who had done nothing wrong, had engaged in “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

This led Pirro, the former Fox News host who’s currently the top federal prosecutor in the nation’s capital, to authorize prosecutors to try to persuade a grand jury to indict the Democratic veterans on charges of seditious conspiracy — charges that, if they resulted in a conviction, would have sent the lawmakers to prison for many years.

That didn’t turn out well. Regular citizens on the grand jury rejected the ridiculous gambit. Under normal circumstances, grand jury members are deferential to prosecutors; MS NOW confirmed that literally zero members of this grand jury were prepared to go along with the partisan scheme.

Pirro’s U.S. attorney’s office had the option of trying again, though it now appears local federal prosecutors have concluded that the smart move is simply to stop trying.

Barring a change in direction, this appears to end a prosecutorial push that never should have started. The larger controversy, however, isn’t over just yet.

For one thing, questions of political and legal principles continue to hang overhead. Since when is it acceptable for a president’s Justice Department to try to intimidate sitting members of Congress who have done nothing wrong? To what extent might this have a chilling effect on other lawmakers who are weighing whether to speak out in ways the White House doesn’t like?

What would the political conversation look like right now if Joe Biden had declared publicly that he believed Republican members of Congress had engaged in “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” and, soon after, his DOJ had tried to charge those GOP members with felonies, despite no evidence of wrongdoing?

For another, Pirro and her team may have given up on going after the Democratic veterans, but that doesn’t mean the Democratic veterans have given up on going after Pirro and her team.

In fact, some of the targets of this ridiculous gambit appear eager to turn the tables on those who went after them. Politico recently reported that Democratic Rep. Jason Crow has demanded that Pirro preserve all evidence related to her efforts to bring charges against him and his colleagues.

A week prior, after Sen. Elissa Slotkin told the Justice Department that she wouldn’t cooperate with its baseless investigation, the Michigan Democrat’s lawyers also requested that Pirro preserve all documents related to the matter for “anticipated litigation.”

Pirro, in other words, might not have the final word on this one. Watch this space.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.